Alexandre Soloviev

Nonlinear dynamics of the lithosphere and earthquake prediction

1 Fundamentals of Earthquake Prediction: Four Paradigms.- 2 Hierarchical Models of Seismicity.- 3 Models of Dynamics of Block-and-Fault Systems.- 4 Earthquake Prediction.- 5 Earthquake Prediction Strategies: A Theoretical Analysis.- 6 Recognition of Earthquake-Prone Areas.- References.

Identification of Future Earthquake Sources in the Carpatho-Balkan Orogenic Belt Using Morphostructural Criteria

Abstract—The Carpatho-Balkan mountain belt, the most seismic zone of the Circum-Pannonian region, is studied with a goal to identify sites where shallow earthquakes with M≥ 6.5 may occur. The study is based on the assumption that strong earthquakes associate with disjunctive nodes that are formed around the junctions of lineaments. In the study region, lineaments and disjunctive nodes were defined by a morphostructural zonation method. The morphostructural map compiled at the scale of 1:1,000,000 shows a hierarchical system of homogeneous blocks, the network of morphostructural lineaments and the loci of disjunctive nodes. Shallow earthquakes with Ms≥ 5.0 recorded in the region were found to be nucleated at the mapped nodes. In the Carpatho-Balkan mountain belt, the nodes where earthquakes with M≥ 6.5 may occur have been identified using morphostructural criteria of high seismicity, previously derived from pattern-recognition of potential seismic nodes in the Pamirs-Tien Shan region. In total, 64 of the 165 nodes mapped in the studied region have been defined to be prone to earthquakes of M≥ 6.5. These 64 nodes include the seven where earthquakes of Ms≥ 6.0 already took place.

Modelling of block structure dynamics for the Vrancea region : Source mechanisms of the synthetic earthquakes

Abstract—The main structural elements (blocks) of the Vrancea (Romania)—the East-European plate; the Moesian, the Black Sea, and the Intra-Alpine (Pannonian-Carpathian) subplates—are assumed to be rigid and separated by infinitely thin plane faults. The interaction of the blocks along the fault planes and with the underlying medium is elasto-viscous. The velocity vectors which define the motion of the East-European plate and of the medium underlying the subplates are input model parameters, which are not changed during the numerical simulation. At each time, the displacements of the subplates caused by these motions are defined so that the system is in the quasistatic equilibrium state. When, for some part of a fault plane, the stress exceeds a certain strength level, a stress-drop (a failure) occurs (in accordance with the dry friction model), and it can cause failures in other parts of the fault planes. The failures represent earthquakes and, as a result of the numerical simulation, a synthetic earthquake catalog is produced. Panza et al. (1997) and Soloviev et al. (1999) have determined the ranges for the values of the motion velocity vectors and of the other parameters of the model for which the space distribution of epicenters and the frequency-magnitude relation in the synthetic earthquake catalog are close to those of the observed seismicity. In this paper we study the variation of the slip angle of the synthetic earthquakes as a function of the variation of the model parameters, and we compare our results with observations.